Effect of artificial-intelligence planning-procedures on system reliability

For an embedded real-time process-control system incorporating artificial-intelligence programs, the system reliability is determined by both the software-driven response computation time and the hardware-driven response execution time. A general model, based on the probability that the system can accomplish its mission under a time constraint without incurring failure, is proposed to estimate the software/hardware reliability of such a system. The factors which influence the proposed reliability measure are identified, and the effects of mission time, heuristics and real-time constraints on the system reliability with artificial-intelligence planning procedures are illustrated. An optimal search procedure might not always yield a higher reliability than that of a nonoptimal search procedure. Hence, design parameters and conditions under which one search procedure is preferred over another, in terms of improved software/hardware reliability, are identified. >